This is not a "slow burn". It is a crafted piece of film put together to tell a story of a man who yearns to live in a part of society he can never truly be a part of. If you watch this film with that thought in mind, you'll understand it better.

Dr. Faraday we learn early on, is a small town doctor who prides himself as being a respectable, proper gentleman. He does all the little things required to be a part of upper society but can never really be upper class as he is the son of a lower class family whose mother was a maid.

The defining moment of his childhood (shown in the film) was a visit to Hundreds Hall for a party thrown by the well-to-do Ayres family for their young daughter Susan (Suki). he notices the opulence, the pomp and circumstance of it all. The event is from a different world than the one little Faraday lives in. He knows he doesn't belong but he yearns to be a part of this group of people. A photograph, where Suki jumps in front of Faraday is a small example of this exclusion.

Through a coincidence, he is able to get into the house that was restricted to outside guests, and delves further into the life he cannot possibly attain. In the kitchen he literally gets a taste of the sweet life when he licks cake batter off a spoon as his mother talks with some of the maids.

While she is distracted, he wanders off through the house, admiring the size and luxuriousness of the interior halls. He arrives at the grand staircase and he thinks deeply about wanting nothing more than to be a part of this family; living in this house. He wants it so bad that he breaks off a stone acorn from the wall. All the while, Suki is watching, smiling at this foolish little pleb of a boy.

His mother find him and confronts him on his disappearance. He reveals the acorn and she slaps him across the face for his doltishness. He should not even have dared to dream of being a part of this world.

As we move into the present day with Faraday now Dr. Faraday, he has grown up but he is, in a lot of ways, still that little boy. That little stranger who does not belong in that house with that family. Understanding this will help to understand the movie. It is not a supernatural horror film. It is a film about a man trying desperately to be part of something he cannot ever really be a part of. As hard as he might to be a refined British gentleman with glowing credentials, he is still the lower class country boy.

When Faraday meets the Ayres family, they, like the house they live in, are all in various states of disrepair and neglect.The mother has never gotten over the death of her first child Suki. The son, and heir to the estate, has been physically damaged in the war. The daughter, frumpy and tired, has let herself go, resigned to the fact that her mother loves her dead sister more.

Upon meeting and then visiting the family often, Dr. Faraday builds a rapport that he hopes will bring him closer to that childhood desire of being a part of this class. However, even as they are all shadows of their former selves and he is a rising star amongst his middle class peers, Dr. Faraday never attains their upper class status.

As each family member side-tracks him from that ambition, he coldly takes steps to eliminate them. We never see on screen the wicked deeds he executes but he methodically gets rid of anyone in his way of winning the prize he so desires. He banishes the son to an asylum, he fakes the mother's death as a suicide, he murders the daughter who turned down his marriage proposal.

In the end, with the Ayres family gone, the house is left desolate and barren. There is no furniture and the rooms are littered with dead leaves, blown in from the outside through broken windows. Dr. Faraday holds the keys to the house suggesting he its the owner. It it literally a hollow shell of its former glory, but to Dr. Faraday, the house is a prize worth having no matter the derelict conditions.

The last shot of the film is a teary eyed little Faraday, standing at the top of the grand staircase looking down as if to suggest he never stopped being that sad, little boy who just wanted so desperately to be a part of something.

I'll be kind to this film in this respect: Lenny Abrahamson didn't set out to play by the usual (or at least de rigeur) rules that govern a lot of creepy-old house stories, as this is about 90% of the time a drama with some touches of very staid and not-all-there romance, and then in the last third he and his crew try their hand at a couple of sequences where some supernatural entity attacks a couple of the characters left in the Hundred's (sic) Hall in this small provincial English town (which you know is far from most civilization as characters talk of London like it's some far away distant land, and this is in the 1930's I think).

The studio who put this out may have been between a rock and a hard place: how to sell a movie that has the veneer of Gothic Horror, but doesn't have the passions of a Jane Eyre (I believe Focus Features, which also put out the 2011 Eyre, put this out too), or Crimson Peak (which I now love even more for just GOING FOR IT as far as a massively extravagant stylistic experience). And for some reason, perhaps due to the bankability(?) of Domnhall Gleeson - who I like a lot generally, especially now as General Hux in the new Star Wars - it was released on more screens than it should have been at an inopportune time. I wish it had done better in some capacity, maybe at an earlier time in the year when people might not be busy with the Back to School season, or with less awards-fare competition, but.... it may just be that it's "Alright" quality was going to leave it struggling. Not to mention that poster; like, what the hell IS that? Terrible.

Anyway, The Little Stranger isn't as dull as you've heard, at least if you stick with it past its opening half hour. Except for a somewhat nutty and make-up overloaded performance from Will Poulter, it starts off as dry as an eraser-board. Maybe some of it is due to the mood of this emotionally tight English feeling of the early 20th century, or the place this Hall is at in general, but it is hard to get into this mood at first with the color scheme on the gray side (which, yeah, again it is England on any given day, I get it). Once the plot really kicks in as far as it goes, that this Dr Faraday becomes ensconced with this family, most especially Ruth Wilson, and they showed a bit more of Faraday's backstory of his attachment (or his unspoken terror) of the Hall from when he was a boy, then I started to want to know more about what was going on and where it goes to.

And with Gleeson here, he's... good, but something I can't really vocalize or think right now holds him back somehow. That may be by design, either in the writing or from Abrahamson, but he is *so* reserved that you suspect he may be hiding something, until it is beyond the point of caring what it may be about. He may be both entirely right *and* entirely wrong for this part, if that makes sense, as a doctor who is supposed to ignite something in the Wilson character - will she leave this place, maybe marry, find some other path in life than staying in this house, and she actually has a more interesting arc in that respect than he does -but ultimately there's complications if nothing else from the Hall itself... or the perception of things going on in it. So I'm not going to say he's miscast, as he does what he can, but maybe it's some misdirection somehow, or that if there was something more in the book this was based on it never got off the page.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll still be happy to see a performance from him that is just 'Okay' than by many others who don't rise up to the challenge. And Poulter, Wilson and Charlotte Rampling are all doing excellent work from what they're given (Wilson particularly near the end reminded me why I grew fond of her difficult character on The Affair). And the Hall itself can't help but he an intriguing location to shoot in. However, when this reaches into its last third, I can't help but feel its dips into horror take away from what would be a more... I'm not sure, emotionally complex given how much the filmmakers try to make it more about the characters than about the kind of schlocky jump scare horror effects that go out to the popcorn audiences. In other words, I get why it does become a horror movie in its last third, but something feels lost in the process.

This may seem like a higher star rating than it deserves, but I didn't dislike this film. I think Abrahamson is too skilled at making good scenes and some impactful images (i.e. Poulter burning that bookcase, the dance scene) for it to be a total disappointment. That said, after the one-two punch of ROOM and the underrated rock and roll trip FRANK, it feels like a step down in some way that's hard to articulate even after stepping out of the theater.

Something of an emotional roller coaster. None of the characters are quite what they seem to be, it's almost as if they culture some hope and then dash it to the ground just as the viewer is lulled into a hope of a happy concluson to that particular scene.

Gradually the superficial character of each key player is stripped away to reveal something unexpected about them. The good become villains, and sometimes good again. The supposed villains revealed to be good or just victims of some unseen manipulator.

The story does come to an end. It's not one of those sadistic films where you're left wondering what the hell just happened, but you are left placing the last few pieces of the puzzle together for yourself .

If you're looking for whizz-bang special effect laden offerings that require nothing more than propping your eyelids open for a couple of hours, then look to Hollywood.

British horror/mystery has led the world in high quality intellectually stimulating film making over the last few years, and this is another superb offering that rests well with the likes of "Dark Song" and "Apostle".

The Little Stranger is a little stranger than most horror films: It's more psychological drama and less shock. It's an understated nerve racker that eats away at your anticipation till you're a part of the haunted house that captures most entering it. A pleasant summer thrill.

Post WWII 1948, Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) takes a call at Hundreds Hall, where mom was a maid and where the Ayres family is on its way to extinction, slowly and horror-film ominously. Yet there are no jump scares, no ugly beings, just the sense that things are not right, with a strange sound or rabid dog to keep the fans on edge.

As in Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, the Hundreds Hall's decay is figurative for the decline of family as well, no better example being the scarred and crippled Roderick (remember Roderick Usher?) from war, who is on the brink of letting the estate go to sale while he feels a bad karma in the house.

At the same time, faraday is telling us in flashback about his strange attachment to the estate from an early childhood party on its lawn after WWI, where celebrating the end of the war to end all wars introduced his working class sensibility to high class and a little girl who doesn't go away after she dies.

She seems to be the little stranger who still haunts Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling). At any rate, the film suggests an almost abnormal attachment by Faraday and a death struggling attachment by the rest of the family including his love interest, daughter Caroline (Ruth Wilson). From here the story takes some formulaic turns, no surprises.

Yet, The Little Stranger has a Brit restraint that lends itself some nice horror moments. Especially effective is director Lenny Abrahamson's, and his writers,' unwillingness to show too much or give answers even at the end. Classy little film.

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Lenny Abrahamson's follow up to his stellar film ROOM (Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Best Director) is based on Sarah Waters graphic novel, and adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon (THE DANISH GIRL). Very early on, the film succeeds in giving viewers that "I have a bad feeling" sensation ... usually a very good sign for films in this genre.

The always excellent Domhnall Gleeson stars as Faraday, the local town doctor called out to check on the lone remaining housekeeper at Hundreds Hall. For a couple hundred years, it's been the Ayres family home, and though, in its past, a glorious fixture among Britain's elite, the home, grounds and family themselves are all now little more than a distant memory of their once great selves. When he was a mere lad, Faraday's mum had served on staff, and his memories of the grand palace are jolted by the sight of its current dilapidated state.

The Ayres family now consists of Charlotte Rampling as the matriarch who has yet to move past the death of her beloved daughter Susan so many years ago; Will Poulter as Roderick, the son who was disfigured and maimed during the war; and Ruth Wilson as surviving daughter Caroline, who seems to have surrendered any semblance of life in order to care for her mother, brother, and home ... each in various stages of ill-repair.

This is a strange family who mostly keep to themselves, well, except for Faraday who seems drawn to the family ... or is it the house? Even his romantic interest in Caroline could be seen as an excuse to regularly return to the house. His flashbacks to childhood and a festival held on the estate grounds provide glimpses of his connection, but with Gleeson's mostly reserved façade, we never really know what's going on in his head.

Part haunted house, part ghost story, and part psychological thriller; however, it's really not fully any of these. There seems to be a missing link - something for us to grab hold of as viewers. The film is wonderfully cloaked in dread and looks fabulous - replete with ominous music and a creepy old mansion. Unfortunately those things are accompanied by the slowest build up in cinematic history. "A snail's pace" is too kind as a description. The film is very well acted, but horror films and thrillers need more than atmosphere, otherwise frustration sets in with the viewer. There is little doubt this played much better on the pages of Ms. Waters' book.

What can you say about a film that feels hours longer than it actually is? One thing I would declare without apology is that it better have a powerful resolution. In other words, a film that feels so arduous to get through better be that way for a good reason. Because if it doesn't have a solid payoff, then what was the point of making the audience sit through endless stretches of nothingness? That's what is done here too often.

A film that is sluggish, dour and interminable is not going to get much recognition for anything, even if the cast does a decent job. Here, Domhnall Gleeson is a British doctor who comes to an old estate owned by a wealthy aristocratic family, one that he came to know as a child. Gleeson does his best with the sandpaper-dry screenplay, but his efforts are for naught. Director Lenny Abrahamson appears to have taken too deliberate an approach. There's nothing wrong with a film relying on subtle horror, as this is based on a novel. The problem is, a big chunk of the film is so sedate that one will either be starved for interest by the time things pick up or will just plain want the film to end as I did. The film's lethargy made me check the time, something I never do anymore. It simply took too long for anything to happen here.

Notwithstanding my respect for the talent involved in this film, I decline to recommend it as it had me begging for the closing credits to run. An ending to a film has rarely felt so far away as it did here.

We saw this in a very quiet theater with older adults (so are we).

I love British films. The restraint. The smoldering sexuality that never quite expresses itself. All those pent up emotions. Can they become ghosts?

But I kept thinking, what am I watching? Horror? Ghost story? Love story? Psychological drama? Mental illness transference?

This is a very, very, very slow burn. Lots of loneliness. Long shots. Quiet moments. What are we seeing?

Is it ambiguous? Or straight forward? Is someone up to something?

Did Caroline almost get it right?

Frankly, I think so but a little too late.

I fully expected a movie along the lines of VVitch or Annihilation, and I wasn't disappointed. It's a bit horror movie, possibly a ghost story, maybe a murder mystery and much a gothic drama. The suspense builds from the overwhelming sense of foreboding. There's a malevolent presence but the source is just not clear. You're sure something is going to happen, it'll likely be bad, and you're not sure what it is or what the cause is. Some reviewers were confused by the switching back and forth between past and present, main character narrative, half followed leads and choppiness - I think it's there on purpose to throw off the viewer, and it worked. Is it supernatural, is it madness, is it the supernatural causing madness or madness causing the supernatural? It's hard to tell what's behind the events but the frequent often conflicting and ambivalent clues keep the audience involved and guessing.

Several themes are at play here - class conflict, the decline of England after the world wars, unrequited love, the fall of a once great family, child and teen angst, family/child/parent conflict and dysfunction, rural vs. city lifestyle, male/female conflict, and more. Some are explored more than others, but overall it adds to the complexity and depth of the movie. There's enough here to likely get most people out of their comfort zones at least part of the time.

The buildup is a bit slow - maybe not so much a pacing problem as a slow burn that several reviewers have noted. If you're expecting lots of fast, horror action, this isn't a film for you. If you're looking for complexity, a enigma, and something different, you may like this movie too.

I remember when I first saw Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014) (which I loved), a colleague of mine (who hated it) was unable to grasp why I had enjoyed it so much. I tried to explain that if he had read Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel, he'd have appreciated the film a lot more, to which he posited, "one shouldn't have to read the book in order to appreciate the film." I think I mumbled something about him being a philistine, and may have thrown some rocks at him at that point. So imagine my chagrin when I watched the decidedly underwhelming The Little Stranger, a huge box office bomb ($417,000 gross in its opening weekend in the US), and easily the weakest film in director Lenny Abrahamson's thus far impressive oeuvre. You see, I really disliked it, but the few people I know who have read Sarah Waters's 2009 novel (which I have not), have universally loved it, telling me I would have liked it a lot more if I was familiar with the source material. To them, I can say only this - "one shouldn't have to read the book in order to appreciate the film." It seems my colleague was right after all. I hate that.

As mentioned above, I haven't read the novel, so most of the proceeding comments are in relation to the film only. Aspiring to blend elements of "big house"-based mystery narratives such as Jane Eyre (1847), Great Expectations (1861), and Rebecca (1938), with more gothic-infused ghost stories such as "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and The Haunting of Hill House (1959), The Little Stranger is not especially interested in the supernatural aspects of the story per se. In this sense, Abrahamson and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon have, to a certain extent, created an anti-ghost story which eschews virtually every trope of the genre. More a chamber drama than anything else, the film has been done absolutely no favours whatsoever by its trailer, which emphasises the haunted house elements and encroaching psychological dread (the fact that the film was pushed back from intended release dates several times suggest the studio themselves didn't know quite what they had on their hands). Indeed, to even mention the supernatural elements at all is essentially to give away the last 20 minutes of the film, as this is where 90% of them are contained.

Waters herself has stated she does not consider the novel a ghost story. Instead, she was primarily interested in the rise of socialism in England, the landslide Labour victory in the 1945 general election, and how the now fading nobility was dealing with the decline in their power, influence, and financial opulence; "I didn't set out to write a haunted house novel. I wanted to write about what happened to class in that post-war setting. It was a time of turmoil in exciting ways. Working class people had come out of the war with higher expectations. They had voted in the Labour government. They wanted change. So it was a culture in a state of change. But obviously, for some people, it was a change for the worse."

With this in mind, the main theme of the film is Faraday's attempts to ingratiate himself with the Ayers family, to transform himself into a fully-fledged blue blood, even when doing so goes against his medical training; his commitment to his own upward mobility is far stronger than his commitment to the Hippocratic Oath. He is immediately dismissive of the possibility of any supernatural agency in the house, and, far more morally repugnant, he does everything he can to convince those who believe the house is haunted that they are losing their minds, that the stress of what has happened to the family has pushed them to the point of a nervous breakdown. He's also something of a passive-aggressive misogynist, telling Caroline, "you have it your way - for now", and "Darling, you're confused". For all intents and purposes, Faraday is the villain of the piece, which is, in and of itself, an interesting spin on a well-trodden narrative path.

However, for me, virtually nothing about the film worked. Yes, it has been horribly advertised, and yes, it is more interested in playing with our notions of what a ghost story can be, subverting and outright rebelling against the tropes of the genre. I understand what Abrahamson was trying to do (after all, my all-time favourite horror movie, The Blair Witch Project (1999) is all about psychologically disturbing the audience, with not a jump scare in sight), however, so too does The Little Stranger shun the standard alternative to jump scares - creeping existential dread - and as a result, it remains all very subtle, and all very, very boring - the non-supernatural parts of the story give us nothing we haven't seen before, and the supernatural parts simply fall flat (the "twist" at the end is also incredibly predictable).

One of the main issues for me is Faraday's emotional detachment. I get that he's the ostensible villain, so we're not meant to empathise with him, and, as an unreliable narrator, his very role is to objectively undermine the subjective realism of the piece, and disrupt the smooth path of the narrative transmission (the same role performed by the Second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca). However, Domhnall Gleeson practically sleepwalks his way through the entire film, getting excited or upset about (almost) nothing; on a stroll through the estate with Caroline, she apologises for dragging him out into the cold, and he replies, "Not at all. I'm enjoying myself very much", in the most dead-tone unenthusiastic voice you could possibly imagine, sounding more like he is having his testicles sandpapered (this part also elicited the film's only laugh at the screening I attended). So I know detachment is precisely the point, but, firstly, we've seen Gleeson play this exact same character before - all brittle, buttoned-down intellectualism - and secondly, he comes across as more robotic than detached, and after twenty minutes, I was thoroughly bored of him, and just stopped caring.

Partly because of this, and partly because of Coxon's repetitive script, the film is just insanely and unrelentingly dull. Now, I don't mind films in which nothing dramatic happens (The Rider (2017), which barely even has a plot, is one of my films of the year), but in The Little Stranger nothing whatsoever happens at all, dramatic or otherwise. By way of comparison, check out I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), a similarly themed film which shuns jump scares but whose encroaching sense of dread creates a potently eldritch tone, something sorely lacking in The Little Stranger. Instead, the script just goes round and round, through the motions; "this house is haunted" - "no, you're just tired" - "you're probably right" - "I am, have a lie down" - "okay. Wait, this house is haunted" - "no, you're just tired", etc.; wash, rinse, repeat. The pacing is absolutely torturous, and I certainly envy anyone who was able to get more out of the narrative than the opportunity to take a nap.

One thing I will praise unreservedly is the sound design. Foregrounded multiple times, this aspect of the film often becomes more important than the visuals. For example, sound edits often bridge picture edits in both directions (L Cuts and J Cuts). Similarly, we repeatedly experience the sound of one scene carrying over into the image of another well beyond the edit itself, so much so that it becomes a motif, suggesting a distortion of reality. Just prior to the dog attack, the sound becomes echo-like and the picture starts to move in and out of focus, as the camera shows Faraday in a BCU, suggesting he is becoming unglued from his environment. This also happens later on with Roderick, just prior to the fire. Perhaps the most interesting scene from an aural perspective is the scene in the nursery near the end of the film. As Angela examines the room, the distorted and difficult to identify sound becomes unrelenting (it is easily the loudest scene in the film). However, as the other characters run through the house towards the noise, all sound is pulled out almost entirely, with only the barest hint of footfalls detectable. This is extremely jarring and extremely effective, working to emphasise the dread all of the characters are by now feeling.

However, beyond that, this just did nothing for me; there was nothing I could get my teeth into, I didn't care about any of the characters beyond the first half hour, the social commentary was insipid and said nothing of interest, the supernatural aspects are so underplayed as to be virtually invisible, and, most unforgivably, the film is terminally boring. Maybe if I'd read the book...

5/10

I was not planning on writing a review, but upon seeing the top review states this is a horror film, I had to. This is not a horror film, in any way, shape or form, and people thinking this will be extremely disappointed(same thing that happened with the witch). That being said, this is one of the most bizarre movies I have seen in a while. Two days later and I am still confused about the ending, and my girlfriend and I both interpreted it completely different as well. I'm fine with a confusing ending, if the the rest of the film is up to snuff, but overall I just felt something was missing. The acting was top notch, Ruth Wilson killed it like always, and everyone one was note worthy. The atmosphere that was created was simply outstanding. This house felt alive to me. Even after all these positives, both of us still felt empty(just like the theater)after the movie ended.

I love the moody atmosphere of this movie and the cinematography. The action is very slow building and is not suitable for either children or fidgety ADD adults, as it does not rely on "boo" scares around every corner or over-the-top special-effects-overload in order to be good. When I saw the film at the cinema, there were actually people walking out of the movie half way through it. Their loss!

Slow burn, Lost interest at parts, Good Cinematography, Well acted, Confused at ending.

I believe that the harsh criticism this film recieved by the audience is simply down to the fact that director Lenny Abrahamson did not give the audience what they were expecting. One critic described it as "not scary enough", as he/she was clearly disappointed, not to be given a character who asks "Who's there?" whenever they hear a noise. This is a movie that does not fit in a tidy box, but takes elements from a wide variety of genres to tell a truly unique story with a fascinating character.

Lenny Abrahamson is a director touched by the hand of the cinema god. Visually, this film is beautiful. From the stunning production design to the uniform and muted colour palette. The sound design Is not the cliche loud noises you will find in horrors, but instead uses natural sounds such as the creaking of an old house and silence to create an uncomfortable atmosphere.

I found the character of Faraday (Donal Gleeson) truly facinating. An ocean of emotion contained in a conservative upper class persona. I found it particularly fascinating how Lenny explored the harsh consequences suppressed emotions and a lack of self-awareness can do.

This won't give you what you think you want, but will certainly give you what you want. Thank you Lenny.

One of the only things that was good about this film was the scenery. The scenery was stunning in practical all the scenes. The set desgins were also lovely. The sets looked like some out of the the 1940s. Domhnall Gleeson who plays Faraday also did his best in this film. He and Ruth Wilson were the only people in this film, in my opinion that were giving it their all. They don't have much emotion to give but they did stand out jobs. Now like I said before this movie is boring. Thank God the film had something nice to look at in the background because the dialogue in this is so bland and boring. Before watching this movie I read some articles on it and apparently this film was supposed to be three and a half hours long and I could tell. There were so many awkward and terrible transtions that made no snese, like there should of been a scene there but they cut it out. I can understand cutting it down but they could of made it so it was a different time length just so we can understand the story better. Also the story was so hard to follow. It was hard to follow because they have no backstory what so ever, like I said this is based off a book. And I couldn't figure out who and or what the main villain was, and I still don't know. I don't want to go on with how bad this movie was because I could. In the end this movie is really beautifully shot and the sets look gorgeous. So if you like well shot movies and or if you read the book then I recommend you see this movie but if not avoid this movie at all costs.

If you read the book then the movie is a pretty accurate portrayal. They do blow through the first 3/4 of book quickly but it stays true. This is not a horror movie nor was it a horror book. A true slow burn.

For a while, 'The Little Stranger (2018)' is more than intriguing but the problem is that it's just incredibly slow, and I do mean slow - to the point that it quite possibly feels like one of the longest films I've ever seen, despite its relatively short 110 minute run-time. This initially feeds into a sort of refreshing restraint and willingness to take its time but eventually removes all sense of urgency from the piece. It's not even a 'slow-burn', really, it's just slow. Still, this isn't the death of the picture. It leaves a conventional pacing behind, instead moving towards a more long-winded and subtle style of storytelling that distinctly marks it as an adaptation of a novel - a medium in which the same time-frame and lack of conventional genre-elements would be infinitely more accessible due to the access it affords to its characters' inner thoughts. This approach is certainly distinct, and appreciated, even if it isn't entirely successful. Much of the picture is told through hints, which you do have to look hard to see, as the majority of the narrative seems to focus solely on its protagonist and his relationships to the other core players as opposed to anything 'spooky' or 'supernatural'. In reality, this isn't really a 'horror' film at all, despite being essentially marketed as such. It plays out much more like a straight drama, with some mysterious and maybe even ghostly elements added infrequently into the fray. Even so, there's an intermittent yet powerful sense of something unseemly going on behind the scenes. It's actually explored in a skilful yet tenuous manner that eventually reveals its debatable but, either way, decidedly unique concept and, even, execution. The feature makes you wait for its more powerful moments, with its final shot possibly being the key to answering its many questions. I say "possibly" because almost everything is purposely open-ended, though I feel there is a definite preferred reading. It's a shame, then, that some moments seem to be slightly more explicit than they perhaps ought to be and that a couple of perspective shifts feel ever so slightly out of place, included simply to inject some 'excitement' into the narrative. While you can certainly feel the length, it's never exactly boring and I think that these more intense sequences ought to have been omitted to maintain the otherwise rigid first-person perspective and to really hammer home the story's ambiguity. Speaking of our protagonist, he is especially straight-faced and maintains a stiff upper-lip throughout. This can sometimes make him a tad difficult to empathise with, mainly because it is difficult to know what he's thinking or, more importantly, feeling at any given moment. This portrayal is vital, though, as the restraint he shows plays into the themes of class so integral to the narrative. Though he often makes stubborn decisions, we typically understand his perspective and know what he has or hasn't seen. Plus, when it is called for, a wide range of emotions can be seen bubbling behind his eyes and it is these moments that mark Domnhall Gleeson's performance as much more nuanced than it might, at first, appear. The other characters don't hide their emotions as much but the fear of being impolite or perhaps being viewed as 'of unsound mind' tends to get the better of them. All the actors do a great job with the material, especially Ruth Wilson who delivers a fantastically layered performance that often says a lot without saying anything at all. Overall, the feature does do an excellent job at emulating the classic ghost stories from the 1800s, the kind in which nothing is explicit and the scariest thing that happens is if an ill feeling grips the narrator. It does genuinely feel like a novel translated straight to the big-screen, for better or worse. Furthermore, it's a different take on a well-worn genre, one that eloquently calls back to its roots while taking a more restrained approach than perhaps usual. It's interesting, especially in its themes and ideas, but it isn't always entertaining and it does become slightly less engaging during its mid-section. Still, I'd say it's an enjoyable experience on the whole. 6/10

It was a pleasant surprise for me, even if it wasn't a horror movie. It had authentic dialogue, unlike the boring lines Hollywood offers these days, the movie feels real and the acting was very good as far as the 3 main characters are concerned. Yes, the movie is a bit serious, but that's what makes it different from all the other movies and the ending makes it brilliant. The film director explains it in detail in an interview for "Thrillist Entertainment".

Nice to see a movie work on atmosphere and not jump scares

This is one of those films I wish I liked more than I actually did. The Little Stranger is a tough one to recommend because I'm unsure who exactly it would play well to. Personally, I'm a big fan of slow-paced, melancholic character studies with psychological themes. Sprinkle in some horror elements too? Yes please! If there's an audience for this, it definitely should've been me. But somehow, despite all the things I appreciated-the gothic sets, thick atmosphere, subtle storytelling, restrained chills, psychological focus-the film just failed to fully engage me.

It's unfortunate because of the clear attention and care that went into making this. The acting is strong, the story taken seriously, and the themes rich. What I appreciated most was the way in which the film takes the concept of a "ghost" and re-purposes it to explore how a seminal childhood experience can profoundly impact personality development and future, potentially pathological decision making. The film is constructed to force the audience to question Faraday's motivations in his uncanny attraction to the manor and its heirs. As more about his childhood is revealed, one event in particular, those motivations slowly gain focus: does he want to make amends? transcend his own social class? resolve an unconscious conflict? make his mother proud? Probably all of the above, to some degree. And the final twist at the end of the film is quite intelligent, giving a literal, supernatural explanation for the figurative way in which Faraday's childhood self has been sabotaging his adult life.

Even still, with all of the things the film has going for it, something is amiss. I think part of the problem is that it feels like a film with an identity crisis. It's part gothic romance, part dramatic character study, part mystery, part supernatural horror, and all of these disparate elements don't quite coalesce into a harmonious whole. In trying to do so much, it ends up feeling scattered. It also doesn't do a particularly good job at creating a sense of forward momentum in its narrative. It feels plodding and inconsequential for much of its runtime and sadly just fails to compel despite the strong final moments. As much as I appreciated the themes and the craft, the experience of actually watching the film isn't as entertaining as it could or should've been. Still, I'd give it a mild recommendation if any of the above sounds appealing. If you end up bored, don't say I didn't warn you.

Solid 3/5

Lenny Abrahamson arrived on the film scene with the blistering double whammy of ADAM AND PAUL and GARAGE. Since then he has gone on to do the compelling and understated crime drama WHAT RICHARD DID, the madcap FRANK and the excellent film adaptation of ROOM. THE LITTLE STRANGER feels like the first misstep of his career.

Working from a Sarah Waters' novel that is full of her usual obsessions with class, status and outsider challenges to the British social order, Abrahamson's elegant aesthetic - first road-tested in WHAT RICHARD DID - opens out Hundreds Hall as an architectural manifestation of the decaying post-WII colonial order. There is plenty of eerie and uncanny atmosphere within the marginal spaces of this dilapidated Wiltshire country pile.

The matriarch of the Ayres family is played by the always watchable Charlotte Rampling, while Will Poulter and Ruth Wilson are both excellent as the Charlotte's living children - one a battle-scarred fighter pilot and the other the unsung brains behind what remains of the Ayres' agricultural operations. However, none of these characters are given as much screen time as the central figure of Dr. Faraday, played with dull restraint by the frequently unwatchable Domhnall Gleeson. In the best of his work the younger Gleeson is a callow or prickly presence - think EX MACHINA or that intensely weird episode of BLACK MIRROR. However, for my money he is too often coasting along in roles that require a little more intensity or nuance. In THE LITTLE STRANGER his conniving social climber owns the narrative, but drains all life from it with his blandly insipid presence.

It is a great shame, as Abrahamson has done so much of the hard work of creating mood and atmosphere, with a few scenes ascending to the realm of truly terrifying, especially a canine attack on an unsuspecting child. Yet with the film's focus firmly ensconced with an interminable central character and a not-so-mysterious plot, the film never really comes to life.

While a wonderfully dark and beautiful film, we can only see a certain dimension of the doctor...which is quite a bit less than the novel reveals.

This is a slow, atmospheric, haunting masterpiece like The Others. For anyone who loves British film, Ghost Stories, excellent acting, great storyline, and old haunted houses, this film should be at the top of the list. I can't say enough how much I love this film with all of its muted colors, depressed people, and clinical analysis set just after WWII--late 40s or very early 50s.

I'm not one to leave a negative review normally (or any review for that matter), but what a snoozer. I've had more exciting naps. Great cast, but one of the most boring "horror" movies. I was unswayed but the sub 6 audience score after reading a few of the decent metacritic reviews. Boy, was I surprised. Very atmospheric, but little substance. An hour in I was checking my watch wondering when something interesting would happen, and continued to wonder until the closing credits. Very disappointed.

Only thing strange is wasting time on this piece of s*it. Waste of time. Poor attempt at horror. After watching a horror /mystery movie you should feel appreciation for the creator if it's good but in this situation I feel cheated. Why did I waste my time on this.

Domhnall Gleeson's rather stiff young doctor is called to a country house that he previously visited as a child, populated by a wholly miserable family struggling to keep on top of running their pile. Strange things begin to happen, or rather one or two things happen eventually (and are not really used to build atmosphere as much as they could have been). The pace of the film is very slow, and the 111 minutes feels much longer. The acting is fine (although Roderick Ayres could have been better cast I think), the sets excellent, and it has some atmosphere, but I didn't care much about any of the characters, and by the end I just wanted it to be over. It was a bit of a 'meh' ending for me, which didn't explain everything that had happened during the film. Maybe the book's better.